to the mills in Florence. The Florence and Cripple Creek Railroad was incorporated on April 17, 1893. Smith was an officer in the company. The railroad the Free Road (a private road which had been recently constructed from Florence through Victor to Cripple Creek), and construction began on January 1, 1894. The first ore train rolled on over the 'Gold Belt Line' (as the railroad was nicknamed) on May 27, 1894; the first passenger train began service on July 1, 1894. (Operation of the railroad ceased when the company liquidated itself in January 1913. The track was torn up in 1914.) Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894 Smith was one of three mine owners to precipitate the Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894. The mine owners, who employed about a third of the miners in the area, extended the work-day to 10 hours while refusing to increase pay. The workers, represented by the Western Federation of Miners, struck. Although some smaller mining companies capitulated immediately, the remaining owners (including Smith) raised a paramilitary force under the legal protection of the local sheriff. After a tense and somewhat violent standoff, the governor sent in the state militia to protect the miners. Smith and the other mine owners agreed to return to the eight-hour day. It was a major victory for the union. Leadville miners' strike of 1896-97 Prior to the Leadville Colorado, Miners' Strike, Eben Smith wrote in a letter to an associate, "we will have to close all of our properties as we have not made a dollar in two years." However, historian William Philpott has written that Smith "almost certainly exaggerated." Leadville's mining industry had "recovered impressively" from the downturn of 1893. The Mine Owners' Association in Leadville conducted a lockout of mineworkers during the strike. Smith instructed an associate to close the mines "unless lightning strikes and kills off all the Irish," an acknowledgment that the Cloud City Miners' Union, Local 33 of the Western Federation of Miners, was largely controlled by Irish miners. After violence at the Coronado and Emmet Mines in Leadville killed four strikers and one fireman, Smith wrote to a London business contact, "The strikers got the worst of it in the raid on the Coronado and Emmet, there were 10 or 12 killed; we do not know how many, and a great number wounded; they take care of their wounded the same as